Equipment and procedures have been developed for monitoring various premises and areas that need to be supervised, where a plurality of sensors are installed at different locations within a monitored area. These sensors are configured to measure or observe some metric or parameter of interest, such as temperature, pressure, voltage, light, motion, sound, presence of objects, presence of smoke, and so forth. Some common examples of monitored “areas” that might need to be supervised include public areas such as city streets, public buildings, stadiums, public transportation, and also more proprietary areas such as private residences, land, vehicles, industrial premises, communication networks, etc. The sensors are connected through a communication network to a monitoring centre or the like and deliver information about measurements and observations to the monitoring centre, either at regular intervals or triggered by occurrence of an event, e.g. detection of motion, sound, light, temperature rise, etc.
It should be noted that a monitored area may be comprised of an infrastructure such as the above-mentioned examples of public transportation and communication networks. In the field of telecommunication, a monitoring centre called Network Operation Centre, NOC, is sometimes employed for supervision of a communication network based on sensor data reported by sensors located at different nodes and links across the communication network.
In this disclosure, information delivered from sensors will be referred to as “sensor data” which could be, without limitation, any information related to measurements and observations performed by the sensors, depending on their functionality. Further, the term “monitoring centre” will be used to represent a functional entity or node which receives sensor data from multiple sensors in a monitored area and displays information that reflects the sensor data on one or more monitoring screens that can be watched by humans.
An example of how such an arrangement for supervision may be realized in practice is illustrated in FIG. 1 where a plurality of sensor nodes “S” are distributed to different positions within a schematically shown monitored area 100 and being configured to perform various measurements and observations at their positions and to deliver resulting sensor data “D”, e.g. via a suitable communication device 102, to a monitoring centre 104 over a communication network, not shown. In this context, a sensor node may host one or more sensor functions, e.g. for measuring or observing temperature, light, sound, etc. The term “sensor” used in this disclosure thus represents a sensor node that hosts one or more sensor functions. Information that reflects the sensor data is displayed on one or more monitoring screens 106a, 106b . . . that can be watched by some staff present on-site. Such displayed information may include measurement results, a map image, an infrastructure image, any calculations or compilations made from received sensor data, and so forth.
When an event occurs in the area that might require some action to deal with the event, it is assumed that the staff watching the monitoring screens are able to draw their attention to the event for assessment and to decide what action(s) might be needed. Some examples of events that may be considered “abnormal” include fires, accidents, burglary, window breakage, equipment malfunction or failure. Before determining what actions need to be taken due to the event, it may be needed to evaluate the event in order to establish some vital facts such as the nature, location, extent, and potential consequences of the event.
In this disclosure, the term “abnormal event” is used to represent any event that potentially requires some action to be taken for dealing with the event, such as monitoring the event and any consequences thereof with increased attention. However, there are some problems associated with the above-described conventional arrangement for supervision. Firstly, the abnormal event may go unnoticed by the staff for a long time, particularly when there is a great amount of information being constantly displayed on the monitoring screens. Secondly, whenever an abnormal event occurs, the displayed information may not be sufficient or accurate as a basis for properly evaluating and assessing the event and any consequences thereof.